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During the presidential election campaign, some voters were startled to hear for the first time that at least a third of Americans pay no income taxes whatsoever.

The Tax Foundation notes that in 2006, 45,600,000 tax filers paid no income tax at all. Under today’s law, in 2009 47.000,000 (representing probably 96 million individuals) will pay no income tax.

The Foundation maintains that under Obama’s plan 63,000,000 filers will pay no taxes or 44% of all returns. So pretty close to 1/2 of Americans will pay the taxes for the other half as well as themselves.

Obama said repeatedly that 95% of Americans would get a tax cut under his plan. Economist Alan Reynolds, when asked where they got that figure, said simply “They made it up.”

In 2006, IRS figures show that the top 10% of all filers ($109,000 and over) paid 71% of all taxes.

I’m inclined to think that everyone should pay some taxes, and participate in our society. No matter how compassionate you feel towards those who make less in our society, it is not healthy for only a handful of people to pay the taxes for the rest of us.

Now a new report from the OECD that our taxes are the most progressive in the world — we already collect the most from the wealthiest 10% and extract the most compared to their share of the country’s income.

Will Obama continue with his plans to tax the top earners still more? Most economists are suggesting that the current crisis is not a time to raise taxes — any taxes. Yet he seems to be determined to go after those he categorizes as “the rich.”

President-elect Obama has a plan to put one million, American-made, 150 mpg electric vehicles on the road by:2015. Henry Payne, writing in the Planet Gore blog at National Review, reported that the University of Michigan’s taxpayer-funded Phoenix Energy Institute has announced a new $365,000 program to “tell the difference between inspired and misguided” technologies that will “break our addiction to fossil fuels.”

Too many proposed solutions to the energy crisis have crumbled because of unintended consequences,” says Gary Was, director of the institute. “We need to find a way to transform innovations in energy into reality with an unprecedented level of speed and efficiency.”

Was says the money will go to build a robust, ultimately Web-based, interactive tool that enables people to answer real-world questions about how, and if, technologies can succeed and where the bear traps are. “We need to build as tool that will answer big questions for us quickly and accurately,” says Was.

Henry Payne adds presciently:“But a tool already exists that will save us $365,000: It’s called the free market.”

Is there anything so illlluminating as another example that leftists always think that they know better how to manage almost anything than the people actually engaged in the work?